Eddie Murphy reminisced on his infamous game of pickup basketball against Prince.
Murphy thought of the story when Jimmy Fallon asked the actor what memory came to mind in regards to the legendary artist. The basketball game also included Eddie’s late brother Charlie Murphy and was shown onChappelle’s Show. Eddie said that the game happened after Prince asked him and his group to play, and admitted that he wasn’t wearing the proper attire for a game.
“We had on club clothes and Prince had on that outfit that was in the ‘Kiss’ video, where he had the little short shirt and the leather jacket with the buttons,” Murphy told Fallon around the 6:10 mark. “He had that outfit on and a little gold chain around his waist.”
“It was Prince and some dude named Micki Free that used to hang out. They used to all wear that kind of Prince’s clothes so my brother was like, ‘Alright it’s going to be shirts against blouses.’ And they teamed up and the blouses won. They beat the fuck out of us,” Murphy said.
Fallon asked Murphy about a memory attached to Muhammad Ali, whom Murphy referred to as “his hero.” He continued, “I didn’t get to hangout with him but I met him a couple of times. … For my 40th birthday, he gave me a plaque with a glove on it. It was like, ‘From your brother, Muhammad Ali.’ My most treasured thing is this cool little plaque from Ali.
Murphy’s forthcoming movie Coming 2 America is slated to release on March 5 via Amazon Prime Video. The sequel to the 1988 comedy also stars Arsenio Hall, Jermaine Fowler, Leslie Jones, Kiki Layne, Wesley Snipes, James Earl Jones, Shari Headley, John Amos, and Tracey Morgan
“We never thought about doing a sequel to the movie. We thought it was over because the story ended with him going off, it looked like they were going to live happily ever after and that was the end of the story,” Murphy told Fallon about the sequel. “And then the movie became this cult movie you know. Of all the movies that I’ve done, Coming to America is the one that like worked its way into the culture in all these different ways,” he added.
Murphy and Hall were also profiled by The New York Times earlier this week, where Murphy let it slip that Ryan Coogler wanted to do a Coming to America sequel, and approached the actor about it before he directed Black Panther.
“I meet with him and he says, I want to do a Coming to America sequel,” Murphy explained. “He had an idea for Michael B. Jordan to play my son and he would be looking for a wife. I was like, then the movie would be about the son, it’s not our characters, we already did that. It didn’t come together.” Murphy added, “But all that made me start thinking, maybe we should do a sequel.”
